Comtrend announced it has become the first manufacturer to offer home networking adaptors that support speeds up to 400 Mbps. Comtrend's new product, called the PowerGrid 904, is an Ethernet Powerline adaptor that plugs into any standard power plug in a home. The PowerGrid 904 provides Comtrend's carrier customers a competitive advantage in deploying next-generation triple-play services, particularly IPTV, over existing wiring within a consumer's home.

Within minutes of my blog entry, I received the strangest email notification, alerting me to another blog written by Alan Zeichick, 'co-founder and editorial director of BZ Media, which publishes SD Times and Software Test & Performance, and which also produces the Software Security Summit, Software Test & Performance Conference, and EclipseWorld. Also president and principal analyst of Camden Associates.' That's what his bio says.

My money is on targeting iPhones and WM devices until Android actually shows up live and in the wild on more than 500,000 devices. Also, don't be fooled about the Android developer challenge. That's not $10million in prize money, that's a $10 million bribe in order to obtain the critical mass of engaged developers they know will be required for anything useful to come out of the Android project. If they don't have truckloads of developers begging to get their apps onto the phone, their framework will fail and all the mobile partners will go back to business as usual.

'Building a technical infrastructure that provides access to all our sites - large or small, newspaper or TV-based - is essential,' said Jack Williams, president of Gannett Digital, as he announced this week that the Maven Internet TV Platform will be providing enterprise-wide Internet video advertising and player solutions for Gannett's Digital Operations.

The great Exaflood, when modern man drowns in his online videos and other bandwidth-intensive content and the Internet grinds to a crawl with brownouts, is only two years off according to a study done by Nemertes Research. It calculates that it will take $137 billion in global infrastructure investment over the next three-five years - $42 billion-$55 billion in North America alone - to build an arc big enough to prevent significant declines in service.

As the convergence of the four screens continues ­- PC, TV, mobile phone, and Personal Mobile Platform (PMP) - Internet video has shifted programming into the hands of Web users instead of television viewers, blurring the division between a Website and a TV channel as broadband connections enable viewers to surf the Internet to find whatever programs they want.

After Google's Android announcement, at least four big guys should be irritated: Sun Microsystems, Apple, Adobe and Microsoft.Google approaches telephony from the open source side - Linux-based platform, uses Java but does not care about sticking to Java ME - they are planning to use fast OpenGL libraries and are not afraid to be hardware-specific.

I asked what she did for a living. She said she was a software engineer working with SOA. I did not think about my plane ride much until I arrived in San Francisco to attend the SOA World Conference & Expo this past Monday and Tuesday. The first day of the conference as I walked into the hotel, guess who I saw? My friend who I met on the Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. What a small world, isn't it? Her company was one of the sponsors of the event.

The author of the market-leading book Mastering Internet Video, Damien Stolarz, is featuring in the Day Two opener Q&A Conversation with Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco this week (12-13 November 2007). Co-founder of Blue Falcon Networks and creator of high-technology consultancy perceptdev.com, Stolarz will be fielding questions on all aspects of preparing, capturing, compressing, securing and delivering Internet video.

'With its direct ad sales force and growing publisher network combined with the depth and breadth of its library of video content, GoFish is well positioned to scale its network and its revenues,' said John Durham, CEO and managing partner of Catalyst and former president of Jumpstart Automotive Media, as it was announced today that he has been appointed to the board of directors of GoFish Corporation.

Now that broadband is available to more than 100 million households worldwide, every corporate web site must provide video content on the Internet to remain competitive, as well as live and interactive video webinars and on-demand webcasts. Internet video has shifted programming into the hands of Web users instead of television viewers. Internet Video / Internet TV - or iTV for short - is wide open, it is global, and in true 'Web 2.0' spirit it is a direct-to-consumer opportunity. It is creating new business models, leveling the playing field for companies of all sizes, and developing a new, 21st-century video culture online.

Google made its first public move today to put its brand on the mobile sector, announcing an Open Handset Alliance of 33 partner companies committed to advancing an open source platform called Android. Google's partners, gathered apparently over the last year, include T-Mobile, Motorola, Sprint Nextel, China Mobile, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, Telecom Italia, eBay and Telefonica as well as HTC, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia, TI and Wind River. Obviously Apple, Microsoft and Nokia aren't members.

Richard D. Parsons, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner Inc, is going to step down from the CEO role and remain only as Chairman of the filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems and publishing giant. That, anyway, is what early reports are saying this morning.

'In keeping with our vision to provide 'any video, anywhere', our partnership with RipCode is a definitive step towards furthering this strategy,' said Bill Joll, president and CEO of On2 Technologies and featured speaker at the upcoming iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo (San Francisco, November 12-13), as on2 and RipCode announced that RipCode has integrated the On2 VP6 codec, used in Adobe Flash Player 8 and 9, for the industry's first hardware accelerated 2-pass encoding appliance for VP6.

'Mainstream television is moving to the Internet,' said Tony Naughtin, president and CEO of GridNetworks yesterday, as he announced $9.5 million Series A financing led by Panorama Capital and two strategic investors to be disclosed in the future. 'GridCasting is a great solution to support this. We provide a real television experience for the consumer, allow low-cost distribution, and produce a content delivery service that is very sympathetic to the ISP network,' he added.

John Edwards, a frequent broadcast industry speaker and CEO of Move Networks, will speak to how major networks are navigating the unknown waters of online video distribution, and some of the forces driving their decisions. The session will explore some of the various content delivery models such as the 'get your content everywhere' approach, the 'community' approach of having the core content on a broadcasters web site, and the portal approach used by sites like Hulu and Joost.

The next phase of web video, whether that be prime time shows, social networking or user generated content will rely on quality to deliver full screen television like experiences. 'The next twelve months will usher in high definition (HD) web video as a key requirement,' says Bill Joll, president and CEO of On2 Technologies, and a member of the distinguished Speaker Faculty at the upcoming iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco (12-13 November, 2007).

Agilent Technologies has announced that its N2X multiservices test solution is a solution for validating Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service quality for thousands of subscribers on IPv6 network architectures, also referred to as next-generation networks (NGNs). Network equipment manufacturers and service providers can use the N2X solution to characterize the ability of individual IPv6 network elements or entire networks to meet IPTV Quality of Experience (QoE) expectations prior to deployment.

Voice Perspective 2.0 will help contact centers and businesses improve the voice quality delivered to customers whether or not the call is originating either from a traditional PSTN landline-based phone or an IP-enabled phone. This is an important distinction as most VoIP calls today travel over hybrid networks. Keynote stands alone in its ability to measure customer experience of voice service quality for such a hybrid network from the end user perspective.

thePlatform is an application service provider that offers Web-based media management and publishing tools that enable media and content providers to translate a single stream of content into different formats that can be delivered through different channels. It also performs digital rights management. By using thePlatform, media companies can easily create their own video sites as well as syndicate video to leading broadband and mobile destinations such as AOL, Apple iTunes Podcaster, AT&T, MSN, Sprint TV, Verizon Wireless, Yahoo, YouTube, and many others. While thePlatform leverages content delivery networks such as VitalStream or Akamai to actually stream the video content, it is a vital component of the solution that media companies deliver to their own customers. As such, its Web-based services must furnish a high level of performance.

'This collaborative effort will enable a world where you can have your entertainment when you want and where you want it,' said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science & Technology, IBM Research, as he announced today that IBM and MediaTek will combine their expertise in millimeter wave (mmWave) radio technology and digital chipsets to create revolutionary multimedia wireless products.

The next phase in the Internet video evolution, according to the Founder and CEO of Swarmcast, is to meet viewer expectations for video set by HDTV, and devise a way of delivering, long-form, HD-quality video on a website. At next month's iTV Internet Video Conference & Expo at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco (November 12-13), Justin Chapweske will demonstrate that enhancing video quality is now not only possible but simple - thanks to a new generation of backend technologies that are easy to deploy and use.

By 2011, advertiser spending on Internet video streams to PCs and TVs will approach $1.7 billion, but movie and TV downloads will generate consumer spending of $4.1 billion, according to Adams Media Research's new strategic analysis, 'Video on the Internet: Ad-Supported Streaming and Download-to-Own.' 'The Internet is going to revolutionize the business of video distribution,' said AMR president Tom Adams.

The Media and Entertainment Product Line Director for Akamai Technologies, Tim Napoleon, will be giving the opening keynote at iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo next month in San Francisco. Prior to joining Akamai, Napoleon worked closely with Adobe to launch the Flash Video Streaming service at a content delivery startup, so he is uniquely well qualified to cover the most burning topics du jour, including Silverlight versus Flash as the Internet video platform of choice.

'Video downloading - particularly television - is in its infancy, and standards and business models are still emerging. We're excited to bring this innovative service to consumers,' said iTVCon Internet Video Conference & Expo speaker Kate Purnal today as Sandisk, where Purnal is senior vice president and general manager of digital content, announced the public beta version of a dynamic Web-based service that enables consumers to download television shows, movies and other premium video content to portable devices: Fanfare.

WhiteBlox's Make Your Audio Visual platform allows radio stations to broadcast audio and video of live and on-demand programming over the Internet. When paired with Abacast's hybrid Peer-to-Peer video streaming technology, which provides a superior quality picture for a reduced price, stations now have a powerful new cost-effective way to reach audiences.

The Internet has made it increasingly easy for consumers to access content they want: a newly released movie, a sporting event taking place half-way around the world, or a YouTube video. Previously only available through TiVo and Slingbox consumers with Internet access now have on-demand access to any content on the Internet. While content is now easy to access it's not easy to transpose onto everyone's favorite display platform the big screen HD TV. During this session, we will discuss platform-agnostic solutions available today, and the simplicity of bringing Internet content to the masses.

Internap's Streaming Service for Windows Media tied into video production systems to transmit both live and on-demand audio and video. The streaming media solution met the Navy's rigorous security requirements and provided a smooth end-user viewing experience. Following the event, the content was archived on Internap's server, allowing viewers to replay the event at any time.

TV producers, cable companies, consumer electronics companies and content providers need to understand that TV will never be the same. Giants will crumble and start ups will rise in this new TV 3.1 economy. This session will explain what the future of TV will look like and how content providers, content aggregators and consumer electronics companies must respond to remain.

Video Anywhere uses VectorMAX technology to provide complete live broadcasting and video-on-demand (VOD) capabilities for the distribution of video over a network or the Internet. Video Anywhere allows any organization to create, control and distribute live or pre-recorded video content to anyone, anywhere over the corporate network, virtual private network, WAN, LAN, wireless infrastructure or public Internet. Video Anywhere provides complete access control, reporting functionality, and intelligent distribution of video to maximize the impact of your organization's video assets.

As a pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation as the most intuitive way to search new forms of online content such as video. With more than 200 partners and fourteen million hours of indexed video and audio content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech recognition technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than standard metadata-based keyword searches. Chandratillake, founder of blinkx, is a technology innovator with over seven years of frontline experience. He has worked as a software developer for Morgan Stanley, netdecisions, and a start-up called anondesign, where he held numerous roles. After three successful years as the US CTO for Cambridge-based technology firm, Autonomy, Suranga founded blinkx.

Many new models of web broadcasting/programming as well as Internet TV companies by the dozens are cropping up all promising to be the next YouTube phenomenon. Ted Briscoe, CEO, Vibe Solutions Group (creator of Pyro.TV), will discuss the unique online video ecosystem that exists today and how publishers (TV, cable and niche Internet video) will benefit from online video syndicators and video aggregators. He will also discuss what sponsorship and advertising models will work. Briscoe is the former president and COO of AskJeeves.

Important items to consider when choosing video applications for your web site are quality and download speed. In order to meet viewer expectations for video set by HDTV, content providers must re-evaluate the way video is delivered. This session will discuss the next phase in the Internet video evolution: perfecting video quality and enabling long-form content. By offering long-form, HD-quality video, content providers can capitalize on the online video opportunity and increase customer satisfaction. Enhancing video quality is made simple with a new generation of backend technologies that are easy to deploy and use.

The movement towards Web TV programming gives content owners, organizations and marketers a whole new set of tools to explore interactive ways of engaging their audience. However, it also creates two core challenges: viewers are free to watch any program, any time; and these viewers have a low tolerance for traditional, scheduled commercial breaks. Companies now need to devise unobtrusive, highly targeted methods to monetize their audiences, creating mutually beneficial relationships between the consumer and the advertiser.

New models for successfully packaging and delivering video and Internet TV content packaged to today's busy consumer. What are the different business models and advertising strategies that will work, and why? In association, this session will offer an explanation of the convergence of mobile entertainment on the four screens ­ PC, TV, mobile phone and PMP; how to engage the consumer with TV and video content and keep them coming back for more when it's convenient for them (where and when they want it). The session will then round back to how everyone can win: content providers, advertisers, and ultimately, the consumer.

'This is the most exciting project I've worked on in a very long time, and part of that is the level of creative autonomy we can have on the Internet. For better or worse, 'Quarterlife' is truly our own vision,' said Herskovitz. 'The business of television today makes it harder for the individual filmmaker's voice to be heard,' added Zwick. 'That voice has been our calling card for over twenty years, and working with MySpace gives us a chance to speak it.'

Widely adopted by hundreds of enterprise, education and government users since its debut in 2005, the Accordent Capture Station is an easy-to-use, room-based appliance used by 150 of the Fortune 500 and hundreds of education and government clients to webcast and record high-value presentations that take place every day in the world's meeting rooms, classrooms and boardrooms. By automating the process of capturing and publishing streaming media synchronized with slides and other visuals, the Accordent Capture Station has enabled many organizations to make the transition from costly satellite communications, phone lines or high-cost video production to TV-like, compelling and universally accessible online broadcasts.

From traditional media embracing social media in a new digital world, to how independent filmmakers and artists can take advantage of a safe environment (all of VMIX's content is screened by human screeners for copyright infringement violations) to build a network and a brand online, VMIX can look at the broad range of film, music, and digital media backgrounds needed to make this social media happen.

'We wanted to reward people for the role they played in sharing and promoting video legally on the Web. blinkx's new AdHoc widget enables Internet users to monetize the video they choose to embed on their webpages and blogs quickly and easily,' said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx and a speaker at SYS-CON Events' upcoming iTVCon - Internet TV Conference & Expo 2007, as he today announced unique technology to remunerate consumers who have embedded video clips into their blogs or webpages.

'The industry is ready for the next major leap in the evolution of internet TV,' said Jeremy Allaire, Chairman and CEO of Brightcove, 'and that is seamlessly extending from short video clips on sites into full-length programs and movies delivered via the internet to PCs.' Allaire was speaking as Brightcove announced that it is teaming up with BitTorrent to distribute full-screen video using the latest version of Adobe Flash.